Weekly Roundup – March 31st, 2025

"Audacy is tapping Leah Reis-Dennis, its current VP of podcasting, to be its new head of podcasting, and expanding its advertising offerings for podcasters and emerging creators, Semafor has learned.
On Tuesday, the podcast and radio company plans to announce Audacy Creator Lab, a new suite of tools aimed at helping new podcasters generate more ad revenue by allowing some host-read sponsorships and dynamically inserted pre-recorded ads.
It’s the latest company-wide ad change to emerge out of Audacy’s 2021 acquisition of Podcorn, a podcast ad marketplace, and comes amid a broader executive shakeup at the radio and podcast company following its bankruptcy and restructuring last year. In last week’s newsletter, Semafor first reported that chief digital officer JD Crowley was leaving Audacy, and that the company was appointing Kelli Turner to be CEO permanently."

"High expectations for xAI and every other AI darling are buoying the rest of the tech industry for now — but all that ends the moment the AI bubble bursts.
Why it matters: The entire social media world — including X, Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, Google-owned YouTube, even the younger TikTok — has become a legacy platform.
While this inherited business is still huge and in many cases profitable, it's not going to grow or innovate at the pace Silicon Valley and Wall Street demand.
Right now, X may be the most financially challenged of the large social-media platforms. But Meta's and Google's properties are also benefiting from investors' bets on the parent companies' AI growth."

"NBC has confirmed it is interested in taking over at least some of the Major League Baseball (MLB) rights ESPN will forfeit at the end of the 2025 season.
ESPN is opting out of its US$550 million-a-year deal with the league three years early, believing it isn’t receiving enough value from the contract.
Several other broadcasters, including Fox, Amazon and Netflix, are believed to be interested in the package, which includes 30 regular season games on Sunday Night Baseball, the entirety of the Wild Card postseason round, opening night and the Home Run Derby."

"After years of explosive growth, the music streaming market in the UK is levelling out, new research suggests.
Almost half the population, 32.4 million people, has now signed up to apps like Spotify and Apple Music, according to music industry analysts MIDiA Research.
That's vastly more than the 20 million who pay for video streaming, but the number of new subscribers is tailing off. About 1.25 million new customers took out a plan last year, said MIDiA, representing growth of 4%. In 2020, that figure was 9%.
MIDiA says the slowdown will lead to higher prices. "If you're not growing users, what do you do? You get them to pay more," said the company's managing director, Mark Mulligan."

"Apple's (AAPL) streaming platform is losing a reported $1 billion a year as the company faces stiff competition and a more choosy consumer.
According to a report in the Information, Apple — which just shed around $700 billion as a result of Wall Street's latest tech rout — has consistently spent over $5 billion annually to beef up its content slate since launching in 2019. That number, though, dramatically decreased to just about $500 million last year, the report said.
...
Notably, Apple has adopted a strategy different from that of its competitors. For one, its content slate is more limited, although it does boast highly acclaimed titles, including award-winning series like "Severance," "Shrinking," and "Ted Lasso." It was also the first streaming platform to take home an Oscar win for best picture (thanks to "Coda").
In total, Apple TV+ productions have earned more than 2,500 nominations and 538 wins, CEO Tim Cook said on the company's January earnings call."